Development

Zimbabwe’s land reform and white farmer compensation

To bolster a struggling economy, President Mnangagwa is launching a new programme to address the socio-economic consequences of Robert Mugabe’s land reform programme in the early 2000s. Despite limited investment, argues Wandile Sihlobo, the Zimbabwean government’s approach is critical for building credibility in its reform agenda at home and internationally.

When Emmerson Mnangagwa assumed office as President of Zimbabwe in […]

Eritrea: from war and oppression to peace and development

Eritrea’s brutal dictatorship has created a society with the hallmarks of one at war. Now with signs that President Isaias Afwerki has become increasingly isolated, talk has begun of a new regime. But with mistrust so high of public institutions, writes Bahlbi Malk, a recovery programme must reform more than its failing institutions and undertaken psychological reconstruction.

International development has a race problem

Working in Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Health and Sanitation uncovered an underlying prejudice among the white expatriate development community. Until the development sector deals with this problem, can the sort of relationship with governments needed for effective partnerships really be created?

Last week I went to a talk in Oxford about Sierra Leone’s Ebola emergency response. It was a presentation […]

Fragility and uneven aid in the African Great Lakes

The DRC’s new president brings opportunities to rethink development in the Great Lakes region. With current aid policies charged with fuelling political instability, Léopold Ghins argues the status quo is unable to bring prosperity and effective peacekeeping.

Despite decades of foreign interventions, both through peacekeeping and aid, the African Great Lakes remain one of the world’s most fragile regions. So […]

Money guards and hospital hostages in the DRC

Conducting research in new socio-economic spaces can bring unexpected challenges. For two researchers in Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo their identities as white foreigners impacted their relation to power and authority, with ignorance of local customs interacting with privileged access to money and networks.

This article is part of the #PublicAuthority blog series with the Centre for Public Authority […]

A never-ending story? Cyclical mobilisation and demobilisation in the eastern DRC

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, demobilisation programmes aim to reintegrate combatants into everyday life. But there are often blurred boundaries between what is considered military and civilian and, with a less nuanced understanding, potential future security threats could go unchecked.

This article is part of the #PublicAuthority blog series with the Centre for Public Authority and International Development at LSE.

How diverse is your reading list? (Probably not very…)

The dominance of scholars from the global North is widespread, and this extends to the student curriculum. Data on reading lists shows large authorial imbalances, which has consequences for the methodological tools available in research and allows dominant paradigms in disciplines to remain unchallenged.

African and Development Studies: Scholarship in need of its own replication crisis

By exploring the decolonisation of knowledge production in African and Development Studies, Laura Mann delved into the global North-South divide and academia’s need for a crisis of replication, uncovering the ways in which current systems reinforce the status quo towards poor scholarship.

Reading List: Most popular book reviews of 2018

We couldn’t say goodbye to 2018 before sharing our top book reviews of the year, as voted by your clicks! Here they are:

Afrotopia by Felwine Sarr – Anna Wood calls “Afrotopia” an inspiring manifesto and metaphor for a new Africa.
The Oromo and the Christian Kingdom of Ethiopia 1300-1700 by Mohammed Hassen – Aleksander Engeskaug says this book is an important […]

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